Tag: ED Recovery

*If anything I say in this post is phrased problematically or is problematic itself, please let me know so I can learn – I strive to be better and do better always when it comes to body politics and intersectional feminism

I devoured the book, finishing it in three sittings. I could have finished it in just one sitting, but I took notes as I read, jotting down my favorite quotes. I took my time because the book was something I needed to experience, not just read.

I find that it is very easy for those who are not mentally ill to write off triggers and ask those of us who are mentally ill to just “get over it.”

This isn’t entirely their fault – I mean, we could try to be happy for them that they have not and probably will never face mental illness. That’s awesome. I wouldn’t wish my depression, anxiety, or eating disorder on anyone.

Ever since I began recovering from my eating disorder, I’ve had a very strange relationship with exercise. A large part of my eating disorder was over exercising and using it to compensate for eating (kind of as a form of purging?) – I mostly swam, ran, and did ab workouts.

In the four years I’ve spent in recovery, I’ve cycled between periods of exercising and not exercising. This is because when I do begin exercising again, I have a bad habit of beginning to indulge in disordered eating and other disordered habits – restricting, over exercising, mostly, but also criticizing my body more.

A few months ago, I became single for the first time in eight years. During those eight years, I developed and began recovering from my eating disorder – a disorder that left me with a very, very complicated relationship with my body.

The first time I had sex was relatively close to the start of my eating disorder, just a few months before I reached my lowest weight. I was sixteen and sex was awesome. At first.

I’m writing this post for two reasons: to help me better understand my thoughts, and to help my partner better understand my thoughts. Although, I’m not sure if I’ll ever ask him to read this.

There are three things I’m worried about: my partner’s well being, my own well being, and our relationship’s well being.

My partner and I have been together for a few months. He recently lost a lot of weight and I recently gained a lot of weight – the reasons are more complicated than black and white. He knows that I am recovering from an eating disorder, but I’m not sure he understands exactly what that means.